CSE Round Table Workshop on "Our Safe Right of way: Addressing Safety and Accessibility in Indian Cities" on June 23, 2014

The road accident data from the Union Ministry of Road Transport Highways for the year 2012 shows that every hour one person is either killed or injured in road accident in Delhi.

If it is not easy and safe for people to walk and cycle, or access public transport to reach homes, offices and recreation centres, they will steadily shift to personal vehicles and add to the pollution and congestion crisis. Road, urban design and transportation planning should give primacy to people and their safety. This is an occasion to send out the grim reminder that road and urban design oriented towards increasing speed of motor vehicles is also responsible for increasing accident risk in the city.

The paradigm shift is needed to ensure zero tolerance for any injury on roads. Even today the majority walks and cycles and uses public transport to work. In many Indian cities people who commute by walking and cycling outnumber those who use their vehicles. Yet, they travel in extremely unsafe and hostile conditions, in constant conflict with motorized traffic and are easy victims to crashes and accidents.

This is an event to discuss the findings of our rapid review and assessment of Delhi’s accident hotspots, policy gaps related to road safety and the way forward. It is time to set a whole new term of policy debate that can compel regulators to seek solutions to find a whole

CSE’s organized a workshop a round table workshop on ‘Our Safe Right of Way: Addressing Safety and Accessibility in Indian cities on June 23, 2014 at Jacaranda Hall -2 in India Habitat Centre in New Delhi. The discussion forum included participants from all the key policy makers and organsiations, government regulators and stakeholders, civil society representatives, policy makers, experts and media. All witnessed the different source of knowledge at one go from different stakeholders. Several issues from different cities were shared which included experiences from Chandigarh, Haryana, Delhi and Punjab. The workshop discussed how safe our cities can be built around walking and cycling to combat pollution, and congestion. Several issue were discussed according to the expertise: some shared the impediments faced while having safe access to walking and cycling, few had ideas on designing and planning infrastructure, while some of them shared their personal experiences and all put forth their opinions. The forum supported that this sustainable mode of transport must be recognized as a key mode of transport in our cities and the users be given their right of safe commuting on all roads.

The way ahead would be to bring some changes and promote safe and accessible infrastructure by bringing the stakeholders and experts together to have a positive outcome.